


Weathering the Storm

by Cait_Sidhe



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games), The Fox and the Hound (1981)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, Forests, Foxes, Friendship, Heart-to-Heart, Implied Soriku, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts II, Relationship Discussions, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cait_Sidhe/pseuds/Cait_Sidhe
Summary: "He doesn't want to be my friend anymore... he wants to kill me.""Hey, I had a friend try to kill me once, too... but it all worked out in the end!"When Sora and Riku travel to a world where they are changed into foxes, a thunderstorm breaks. Soon after the two find a den to wait it out in, another fox seeking shelter joins them, who seems to be in a situation very similar to one Sora and Riku have been in before. The two boys talk to the fox about it, assuring him that just because friends are fighting it doesn't mean that the friendship is over permanently, even if that friend currently wants to kill you.
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	Weathering the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching "The Fox and the Hound" last night, and realized that the story has strong parallels to that of KH1 if you strip it down: Two best childhood friends get separated; one is manipulated by a bad person; when the other finds him again he claims they aren't friends; they are separated again; when they next meet they get in a big violent fight; the bad person tries to kill the one but the friend who had been manipulated resists him to save his friend's life; they are left separated again at the end but don't want to be.
> 
> Thus, I was inspired to have Riku and Sora have a chat with the fox about his situation.
> 
> Takes place during an ambiguous time after KHII (so could be AU, could be post-canon; whatever you want), and immediately after Tod is sent to the reservation.

“Riku! Riku, look, I’m a fox!” Sora swirled in a circle, nose-to-tail, and then sinuously slinked against Riku.

Riku preened at the show of affection, in part due to the fox instinct but also simply because it was Sora giving it, and then his brain caught up with the situation. “Wait a second, Sora. Didn’t you say we would be lions in this world?”

Sora sat still and tilted his head in thought. “Yeah…”

“And we’re supposed to be in grasslands, right?”

“Yeah...”

“So… following your heart didn’t work?” Riku sighed. They were supposed to be going to the Pride Lands, but the GummiShip navigation had a glitch; instead of turning back, Sora had been adamant that they use the ‘follow your heart’ method to find the right lane.

“Of course it did!” Sora protested. “Maybe not fully, but we’re felines, at least! And in the wilderness! I bet the savanna is just outside these trees!”

“Firstly, foxes are canines,” Riku corrected. “Secondly, savannas and temperate forests are completely different biomes.”

“Bio-what?”

Riku sighed. “I mean, they’re entirely different environments with wholly different types of flora and fauna—no overlaps whatsoever. There’s zero chance you’ll find them against each other. This is not the right world.”

Sora puffed up his cheeks in what Riku assumed was an attempt at a pout, though it simply looked strange on a fox. “W-well, it could have been worse! At least we’re still non-human mammals!”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” Riku mumbled. “Okay, back to the ship, then—”

“No way! I want to explore!” Sora said, bouncing away.

“What? Sora, hey, wait!” Riku bounded after the brunette. 

Sora misstepped, stumbling over a tree root, and Riku tackled him. The two rolled around a bit until Riku had Sora pinned on his back. 

“We can’t just go exploring random places!” Riku scolded Sora in a voice harsher than intended, then at the brunette’s pitiful expression nuzzled his cheek as he amended, “At least, not without contacting someone first.”

“Ugh, I hate when you’re right,” Sora moaned, giving Riku's muzzle a quick lick before wiggling out from under him and looking around. “Er. Do you remember which direction the ship was in?”

Riku took a closer look at the forest. It seemed to be late afternoon, and the sky appeared to be significantly cloudy. Was a storm on the way? All around them were towering trees, thick underbrush, and moss-covered rocks and logs. It was unlike anything Riku had ever seen; he’d technically been in similar forests, of course, such as in Snow White’s world, but he’d always been on wide marked paths, never paying any intense attention to the deeper woods along them except to watch for heartless. The brush here was too dense for anyone but serious trailblazers, hunters, nature photographers, and other such humans to attempt to get through, giving Riku a perspective of the woods he’d never appreciated before. That density also provided another advantage: their chase had been clearly marked by a path of broken branches and rustled leave.

“Follow me,” Riku told Sora, and took off at a trot, Sora in tow.

Suddenly, the darkened sky broke with a flash of light, howl of wind, and a sheet of water. Sora yelped and leapt up in surprise. Riku’s heart skipped a few beats in a panic caused by an intersection of the fox instincts, Sora’s yelp, and a brief yet vivid memory of an extremely different storm. Riku took a deep breath to get himself back under control as the thunder rumbled. He looked around to ascertain where Sora was, and hurried over to him, rubbing along his side in a comforting gesture as well as a reminder to hurry. The wind and rain rapidly devoured their trail, and it was difficult to see anything in the downpour. The two sprinted through the rain, hearts hammering in their chests—why did world order spells need to give you the instincts of the animals it changed you to? Well, Riku supposed some of the instincts were good to have, like knowing how to read the body language of the species, but such an intense fear of thunderstorms was something he could do without. 

Riku abruptly stopped, and Sora barrelled into him. “Hey, what gives?” Sora whined.

“We should have reached the ship by now,” Riku responded.

“What? I thought you knew where it was!”

“The rain messed me up,” Riku admitted. “I must have—eep!” Riku bristled as a bolt of lightning flashed, brighter than any before. Barely half a second later the thunder followed.

“What, afraid of some lightning?” Sora teased, though he seemed just as rattled.

“N-no!” Riku protested. “That was much too close though. We need to find someplace to weather this out.”

“Like this one?” Sora suggested, hopping over to a hole under a tree and sticking his nose in, then immediately backed out while apologizing profusely as a very angry badger berated him for invading his burrow.

After a bit of searching, the two foxes found an unoccupied and fairly spacious den under the roots of a tree. Sora shook himself off, then Riku pointed out that an aero spell would do the job a lot better, so Sora did that for them too. Riku rubbed his nose to Sora’s, then they circled each other a bit while rubbing against each other until they eventually plopped down so they were curled comfortably around each other. Riku began to groom Sora.

The boys’ cuddling/grooming session was quickly interrupted by a third frantic fox daring into the den and crashing right into the pair. He stood and then froze with an expression of shock on his face. “Oh, I’m s-so sorry,” the fox stammered, shivering and clearly panicked as he began to back away slowly. “I d-didn’t know this was o-occupied, I’ll j-just—”

“No, it’s okay!” Sora quickly told the fox, standing up too. Riku stayed lying comfortably as Sora talked with the fox; he trusted Sora’s judgement. “You look like you need a place to stay too. This isn’t actually our own den either, just a place we found to take shelter. It’s plenty big for one more," Sora decided. 

“Y-you sure?” the fox asked nervously.

“Of course,” Sora said firmly. “In fact, I insist.” Sora gently walked over to the frightened fox, who seemed to be calming, and rubbed their cheeks together to emphasize it was okay before sitting back. “I’m Sora, and this is Riku. What’s your name?”

“T-tod,” the fox stammered, still shivering.

“Oh! Tod, stay still for a moment, I’ll dry you off… aero!” Sora said as he held up a paw, and a wind blew over Tod, drying him. 

Tod momentarily stood there in a brief shock, then looked down at himself. “Gosh, I’ve never met a fox who could create wind,” he said, seemingly unsure what to make of that. “Then again, I’ve never met another fox before, either.”

“Never met another fox?” Riku asked, as Sora moved back to his side and invited Tod to sit next to them too. Riku recalled reading that foxes were one of the more affectionate species, preferring to live in groups and naturally cuddling with each other.

Tod accepted Sora’s offer with instinctual ease, confirming that fact as he laid himself down right against Sora. “Nah, I was a farm fox until today,” Tod explained. “But my human brought me here to this forest and left me…”

“That’s terrible!” proclaimed Sora. “How could someone do that to a fox as nice as you?”

Tod wilted at that, looking miserable. “She didn’t want to, but it was either this or keep me locked in the house because the neighbor kept trying to hit me with his loud exploding thing.” He must mean a gun, Riku interpreted.

Sora looked appalled at that. “What! Why would he do that?!”

Tod lay flat on the floor, appearing as though he were trying to melt into it. “It’s all my fault. A couple days ago, he returned from a hunting trip, which he went on with Copper, who is… well, was... my best friend, even though it was forbidden. I went to visit Copper, and the other dog, Chief, started chasing me. I didn’t mean to get him hurt, but he ended up breaking his leg, so now I have to be here.”

“That doesn’t sound like it’s your fault!” Sora told the fox adamantly.

“No, it is,” the fox argued. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to see Copper, but I did anyway.”

Riku joined in the conversation. “Well, he’s your friend, right? Of course you’d want to see him.”

“But he doesn’t think that anymore,” Tod said forlornly. “He was taken away for months so he could become a trained hunting dog. I knew we wouldn’t be able to meet when he returned, but I couldn’t resist. He doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” Sora said. “Not if you’re best friends!”

“No, it is true," the fox argued. "He wants to kill me."

"What!" Sora yelped. "Why would he want to do that?"

"Because it's my fault Chief got hurt. When Chief chased me, Copper’s human made Copper chase me too... he found me first and let me go, which made me hopeful we could still be friends… but then when Chief got hurt he vowed to kill me. If that’s not a sure sign that he doesn’t want to be friends, I don’t know what is.”

Sora scoffed at that. “Hey, I had a friend try to kill me once, too. I had to fight him, even!”

Riku cringed. “Sora…” he said, putting a paw over his face in shame, knowing very well Sora was speaking about him.

“But it all worked out in the end!” Sora continued. “He was being controlled by a very bad human, you see, as well as anger. That sounds like what’s happening to your friend, too!”

Tod looked at Sora with curiosity and hope. “It worked out?”

“Yup!” Sora confirmed. “Better than worked out!” Sora draped an arm around Riku.

Riku sighed. “It was me,” he admitted. Though he always hated talking about that part of his past, perhaps hearing about it could help the fox. “The main issue was that we hadn’t been communicating very well before then. It led to a lot of negative emotions that wouldn’t have been there otherwise, which led me to blindly follow the human when I shouldn’t have.” Of course, it had been much more complicated than that, but the fox didn’t need all those details. “I told Sora we couldn’t be friends, and that I didn’t want to be, but that simply wasn’t true. I was actually miserable without him.”

“But we talked, and now we’re closer than friends!” Sora declared as he beamed. “So I’m sure if you talk to him and tell him your side of the story, it’ll all be good! He'll understand it wasn't your fault, and you'll be best friends again.”

“I don’t know…” Tod said warily. “I don’t think he’ll want to talk…”

“I didn’t want to talk either,” Riku admitted. “But Sora kept trying, and eventually got through to me.” Sora’s stubbornness could be annoying sometimes, but without such Riku would probably still be stuck in the dark.

“And… you’re friends now?” Tod confirmed.

"Yeah," Riku said, giving Sora a fond look and nuzzling his cheek. Technically more, but Riku wasn't sure if the fox would understand what he meant if he said that. 

“Yup! Riku even saved my life when the human controlling him tried to kill me!” Sora said happily.

“But… Copper is a proper hunting dog now. He's trained to kill foxes.” Tod still appeared skeptical, which Riku felt was understandable. Nearly anyone would be when told they should talk to a friend who wanted to kill them, except for, of course, Sora.

“And Riku was trained to do bad things too! But he got over it,” Sora said blissfully. If he were in a human form, Riku would raise an eyebrow at that. ‘Got over it’ made it seem like a much easier thing than it was.

“You don’t need to talk to him right away,” Riku said gently. “But if you’re as good friends as you say you are, I’m sure things will get better between you two.”

"Yeah! Friendship can weather any storm if you put the effort in!" Sora added, giving Tod a nuzzle.

Tod finally seemed to be feeling at least slightly better. At least, he didn't look like he wanted to melt into the floor anymore. “Okay. I’ll think about it,” he decided, giving the fox equivalent of a tepid smile. “Thanks.” He gently rubbed Sora’s cheek with his to express his gratitude.

Sora let out a huge yawn in response, then blinked his eyes and did the fox equivalent of a blush. “Anytime,” Sora mumbled.

The yawn passed on to Tod, who passed it to Riku. Tod gave a yip, the equivalent of a laugh. “Well, guess that’s a sure sign we ought to get some sleep, huh?”

“You said it,” Sora half-slurred as he closed his eyes and began drifting off to sleep. Tod closed his eyes too, naturally cuddling closer to Sora as he followed his example.

Riku looked at the two fondly for a moment, then licked Sora’s ear affectionately before he too settled down and closed his eyes, quickly falling into an easy sleep despite the raging storm outside.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that Tod returned to the farm, where he and Copper eventually do become close friends again, regardless of how the film actually ended. It's just too sad to leave them apart again after semi-reconciling.


End file.
